We examine the emergence of a new party, UKIP, which exploited the new political opportunity presented by growing identity divides, mobilising discontented identity conservatives to secure the strongest electoral performance by a new British party since the 1920s. We unravel the puzzling timing of UKIP’s surge. If immigration rose to the top of the political agenda in the mid-2000s why did it take nearly a decade for a radical right party to fully capitalise on public discontent over the issue? This delay was the consequence of an older reputational legacy from the first wave of immigration. Since Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives had been seen as the party of immigration control. The Conservatives were able to use this reputation in opposition in order to win over the anxious identity conservatives. But doing so required setting up expectations of radical cuts to immigration, expectations the party was unable to meet once it returned government. It was the collapse in the Conservatives’ reputation for immigration control at the start of the Coalition that opened up space for a new party, space that UKIP rapidly filled as disappointed identity conservative voters abandoned the Conservatives and turned to the radical right.

The EU Referendum and its aftermath further polarised identity politics by forging two new political tribes: ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’. The 2016 referendum was the first national political choice to be structured primarily around identity divides. Traditional conflicts over class, income, economic ideology and economic competence were pushed into the background. Instead, it was the conflicts over identity and values which split graduates and school leavers, white voters and ethnic minorities and young and old which primarily drove voters’ Brexit choices and informed their Brexit identities. The intense referendum campaign and polarising political aftermath proved to be a moment of awakening, making voters aware of just how deeply divided they were from their political opponents. They now knew what kind of people fell into each Brexit tribe, and began to display all the classic symptoms of partisan bias when asked to judge their tribe and its opponents, seeing their own side through rose-tinted spectacles while dismissing their rivals as fools and knaves. These attachments have been consequential not only for political views but also for social life since the referendum, as the identities forged by a single political choice have taken on a life of their own.

In Chapter 4 we tell the story of how identity conflicts were first mobilised into electoral politics during the first wave of migration to Britain after the Second World War. This period of British history is rarely mentioned in conjunction with our decision to leave the EU in 2016, but it is critical for understanding more recent identity conflicts. The first wave of sustained mass migration was the first demonstration of the disruptive power of such conflicts, producing a wave of ethnocentric voter mobilisation which upended political competition and has continued to reverberate in debates over multiculturalism, discrimination and identity ever since. The new political conflicts generated more recently by another surge in immigration have interacted with, and sometimes reinforced, these older divisions. The paths followed by Labour and the Conservatives on such issues were first traced out in this period, with Labour establishing themselves as defenders of ethnic minorities, and the Conservative choosing to mobilise anti-immigrant sentiments in the white majority. We cannot understand the identity conflicts mobilised by Cameron, May and Farage without first understanding the era of Heath, Powell and Thatcher.

Chapter 5 focuses on the long-term political trends that helped to set the scene for Brexitland. Both Labour and the Conservatives changed in ways which alienated voters and eroded traditional partisan political identities. The two governing parties converged ideologically, and their elites became dominated by career politicians recruited from a limited number of graduate-dominated professions, reducing the differences between parties and narrowing the sections of society they represented. Voters responded to these changes by losing interest in politics and becoming more hostile to politicians, reflecting a growing belief that they were being denied a meaningful choice. This alienation was particularly acute among identity conservative voters, creating a political opportunity for a new issue or a new political force to mobilise the intense discontent of this group. Sure enough, in the second half of the New Labour governments, an issue emerged with the ability to realise this potential: immigration. We show how and why conflicts over immigration rose up the agenda in the later New Labour governments, and why this issue proved to be such a powerful lightning rod for discontent among identity conservatives.